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Vets agency creates 1-stop website its 1st year, sets agenda

Vets expos across tale

Hiring Our Heroes, a program of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, will be involved with the state in a veterans expo scheduled for Nov. 7-8 in Cobo Center in Detroit. The expos are more comprehensive than job fairs that have been held in the state. This year, those fairs will be fewer in number and larger as the state looks to consolidate the events. Similar events are planned for Aug. 8-9 in Marquette and Sept. 5-6 in Grand Rapids.

In a little over a year, Michigan's newest state agency has launched a one-stop website for veterans and a toll-free number to help with services and needs. It also has helped local organizations and employers better connect with Michigan's 660,000 vets.

For the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency, that's just the start.

The agency's to-do list this year includes starting an on-campus initiative to beef up the number of accredited service officers available to veterans attending classes at colleges and universities. The service officers help veterans submit claims to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Also planned: three expos to link vets to education, employment, health care and quality-of-life opportunities.

In progress is an upgrade of the state's Pure Michigan Talent Connect website, mitalent.org, to add a feature that translates military occupation codes into comparable skills and career paths in civilian jobs. There also will be "heat mapping" capabilities designed to help employers identify where concentrations of veterans with particular skills are located — in and out of state — and help vets identify places where jobs exist.

Jeff Barnes

"The state has made a huge commitment over the past year and has made quite a bit of progress. There's a lot of work to do, and no one has lost sight of that," said Jeff Barnes, director of the agency, which launched in March 2013.

Doug Wells Jr., an official at the Disabled American Veterans and a member of a team of state and veterans service representatives who helped develop the agency's strategy, said he sees Michigan making progress toward being a more veteran-friendly state.

Having a central coordinating agency is important, said Wells, the DAV's national service office supervisor and director of services for the DAV's Department of Michigan.

For example, the agency provided vet service organizations with population information that allowed the organizations to be more effective in deploying service officers and to reach underserved areas.

Service officers are also receiving training in federal VA law and education about the benefits and Michigan resources that might help vets.

Barnes said that because of increased access to service officers, the state is on pace to have a 10 percent increase in new enrollments for VA claims this year. And he said the improved quality of submitted claims has enabled vets to get faster benefit decisions from the VA.

As more veterans access benefits, Michigan's near-bottom national ranking in federal per-person spending has risen. Barnes said VA per-capita spending in Michigan last year totaled $5,088, up more than $1,000 from $4,069 in 2012 and placing the state 49th out of 53 states and territories.

He said Michigan's historically low rank is probably due to several factors, including veterans who entered the auto industry and other sectors and never applied for benefits, a lack of active-duty installations that draw retired veterans to surrounding communities, and veterans unaware of their eligibility.

Fitting vets to jobs

The state is also focusing on employment. Several license and credentialing changes passed by the Legislature include measures allowing military experience to count toward qualification in occupations such as emergency medical technician, firefighter, boiler operator and mechanical contractor. Such changes aim to help vets move into civilian careers while also benefiting employers, particularly in areas of demand.

"We expect 30,000 to 50,000 veterans to return to Michigan over the next five years," Barnes said. "This includes veterans that are a good fit for careers in IT, cybersecurity, health care, electrical and mechanical engineering, skilled trades, advanced manufacturing and public safety."

A September 2013 Michigan veteran workforce study conducted by the state's Bureau of Labor Market Information and Strategic Initiatives said vets "should be prime candidates for many difficult-to-fill vacancies."

The study said some "may find a fairly easy transition into skilled trades or other in-demand occupations," such as military vehicle and machinery mechanics who move into civilian jobs as industrial machinery or automotive mechanics, machinists or heating and air-conditioning installers and repairers.

In addition, vets "with military experience in health care, professional or scientific and technical occupations should be competitive candidates for some of the state's most difficult-to-fill positions in its most high-tech industries," the study said.

The study also provides a snapshot of Michigan's veteran population. Seventy percent are 55 or older, meaning many have either retired or are nearing retirement.

"As more and more veterans retire, they will leave in their absence some skills shortages," the study said. That poses an opportunity for returning vets who possess skills such as leadership and the ability to deal with pressure.

"If veterans are coming out with some of these skills and their peers don't have them, they might be some of the prime people to take … leadership positions," said Jason Palmer, director of the labor market bureau.

The study also found that the number of Michigan veterans and nonveterans not looking for work is about the same. But among vets, about 60 percent indicated they are not looking specifically because they think nothing is available in their line of work or area. Just 1 percent said a lack of necessary schooling or training was their reason.

"This suggests that veterans themselves may believe that they have important education and experiences but that they are having a difficult time identifying how their military experience or occupation translates back to the civilian economy," the study said. "Moreover, these veterans may be having a difficult time talking about their military experience in a way that tells prospective employers about the value of their skills."

New software that the state is integrating — a program called Hero2Hired, developed and used by the U.S. Department of Defense — is designed to help veterans and employers more easily identify where vets fit and then connect them to jobs.

Tammy Carnrike

The state vets agency will work to inform employers about the military skills translator tool. Tammy Carnrike, COO of the Detroit Regional Chamber, said her organization will help promote it.

The Detroit chamber has been an ally of the state on veteran employment — both with the Governor's Summit on Veterans Talent, which it co-hosted with the agency in November, and in brief showcases of vet talent at the chamber's recent Mackinac Policy Conference.

Recruiting pitch from biz

Veteran-friendly employers have a new place to get the word out, as part of the state website michiganveterans.com. The site offers information, resources and support in education, employment, health care and other areas.

In the site's employer section, businesses can work to become certified as veteran-friendly at bronze, silver and gold levels, based on their vet recruitment, training and retention practices.

The certification criteria also give the state one way to track veteran hiring. And at the upcoming veterans expos, the state will gather data on how many people get interviews with employers and subsequent employment.

Additional areas of veteran-related performance — including VA spending, claims development and outreach to veterans and their families — are part of the state's online scorecard system for departments.

The efforts to improve service to vets and connect them with businesses and economic sectors that could be attractive and offer opportunity helped Michigan become one of the first states to land national designation in a new U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation initiative.

AllVet States, part of the foundation's Hiring Our Heroes program, highlights states on a website. Michigan's page links to the state's website and contains additional information and resource links provided by the foundation.

It's a prominent way to place Michigan in front of service members as they plan their transition to civilian life and consider career opportunities and destinations.

"This is one of the programs, resources we can highlight … as part of outreach efforts to service members on base while they're on active duty," said Eric Eversole, executive director of the Hiring Our Heroes program.

This summer also will bring a report from the Ann Arbor-based Altarum Institute, which won a state contract to assess veterans' services provided by federal, state and private organizations in two Michigan regions: Wayne, Oakland and Macomb and a 13-county West Michigan region centered in Kent County.

In each region, more than 90 organizations have participated in Altarum-organized meetings.

"There's no shortage of people looking to support veterans," said Glen Greenlee, Altarum's vice president and director of health care analytics. "What always surprises me is you'll get two people who have been working in this area for quite a while, years … (and) they didn't know each was working in this area. You see connections happen, and that becomes a fairly critical building block to what we're trying to formalize."

The goal, Greenlee said, is to create a network so that when a veteran, family member or advocate makes contact, "even if that service provider can't provide what's needed, you're one degree away … and the person you're talking to can connect you."